Beverages are commonly dispensed into paper or plastic drinking cups having a beaded or rolled top edge adapted to fit disengageably into the downturned peripheral skirtlike flange of a cover or lid, which may be flared slightly outward to facilitate such engagement. A lid is especially useful when a dispensed beverage is to be consumed elsewhere and risks contamination or spillage in transit.
Dispensing machines have been devised to apply lids to drinking cups into which beverages have been dispensed, such as by yon Sydow and McCoy in U.S. Pat. No. 1,994,736; by West in U.S. Pat. No. 3,864,898; or Credle in U.S. Pat. No. 4,319,441. However, doing so is a complex operation, which may malfunction-or tend to increase the beverage price.
Consequently, beverages are more often dispensed into uncovered cups, and lids are applied--or are supplied to be applied--by hand. Such lids are usually supplied in nested stack form, convenient for shipping but not convenient for dispensing. Frequently the lids are spread out on a counter, as in a shallow container, whereupon customers can choose and remove one or more lids. Such an increase in customer convenience favors a corresponding increase in wastage, as some customers (or their children) will toy with the lids, spilling and dirtying them, and others will take more lids than they do cups.
There is a need for even better dispensing of such cup lids for manual capping use and maintaining their as-supplied sanitary state. My invention addresses that need and meets it successfully.